Becoming a Freestyle
rapper takes a unique combination of rhyming skills, vocabulary, charisma and
presence to pull off. It can be overwhelming at first, but following these
simple steps will get you moving toward the mic in quick fashion.
Part 1 of 5: Listening to Hip-Hop
1
Listen to as much hip-hop music as possible. Just as you wouldn't try
and write a novel if you'd never read one, you need to listen to a wide variety
of hip-hop and rap before you start trying to make your own rhymes. Study the
history and the culture of rap and try to understand the core and foundations
of it. It's a living, breathing thing that you need to engage with.
Over the past few years, free online
mixtape culture has become an integral part of hip-hop.[1] Lil Wayne's rise to
fame in the mid-2000s was on the back of a few widely-discussed mixtapes given
away for free online, some composed largely of freestyles. Checking out free
mixtapes is a great way to jump into the conversation happening in contemporary
hip-hop
2 Listen actively. Study other rappers'
skills until you can form your own style. Copy out their rhymes and freestyles
and read them as you would poetry. Studying their music is also good to find
some solid beats that you may want to try rapping over.
Eminem is known for his quick flow,
intricate rhyme schemes, and metrical perfection, while Lil Wayne is known for
his great one-liners and similes. But find rappers that appeal to you:
A$AP Rocky, Tribe Called Quest, Big L, Nas,
Mos Def, Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Kendrick Lamar, Freddie Gibbs, Jedi Mind
Tricks, Army of The Pharaohs, MF Grimm, Jus Allah, Shabazz Palaces and the
Wu-Tang Clan are very different and talented rappers or groups worth checking
out.
Listening to rap that you specifically
don't like can also be helpful in trying to craft a style. Form opinions. Make
arguments. Debate with your friends about the merits of different rappers.
3
Memorize some verses.
Pick a jaw-dropper from one of your favorite tracks and listen to it
repeatedly, until you've committed it to memory. Recite it as you walk around.
Get a feel for the syllables and the flow of the words, the way the words feel
as you say them.
Think about what stands out for you about
this verse. What do you like about it? What made it memorizable?
Find an instrumental version of the song
with the verse you've memorized and practice reciting it to the music. This
will help you get a feel for the flow and the speed at which the music occurs.
4
Listen to freestyles.
Unwritten freestyle raps from straight off the dome will probably be somewhat
rougher and more unpolished than the tracks you've been listening to, but they
can also be more unpredictable and thrilling. Freestyle has its own feel and
listening to other rappers freestyle is a good way to learn the tricks of the
trade.
Check out live battles or hip-hop freestyle
competitions if your town offers them. Go and listen. This can also be a good
way to meet other aspiring rhymers and make connections.
YouTube is a great resource for videos of
freestyle battles from all eras. Everything from Notorious B.I.G. rapping on a
street corner at the age of 17 to classic Eminem battles to the smattering of
underground rappers free-styling over a new Kanye West track are good
research..
Part 2 of 5: Building Vocabulary
1
Write. The more you write raps and rhymes,
the more raps and rhymes you ultimately know. As you write rhymes, practice
coming up with multiple variations on the same rhyming words. These clusters of
rhymes will serve you well when you begin free-styling, because you'll be able
to think of something quickly if you've used these rhymes before.
Try different exercises, like picking
five words at random and working them into a rhyming structure of a few lines.
Don't worry if what you're writing
isn't "rap." Just keep the pen moving. Building good habits of
journaling and writing will keep your mind disciplined toward words and
thinking in terms of composition, something you'll have to do very quickly if you
want to freestyle.
2
Read. If you hope to be able to freestyle,
words are going to be your medium. As a painter uses paints and a sculptor uses
clay, a rapper uses words, so you need to gather as big a pile of familiar
words you possibly can so that you can draw on them in your rhymes. Reading a
diverse variety of books, comics, online articles, and magazines is the best
way to do this.
Read biographies of rappers. You can
kill two birds with one stone by reading about hip-hop while simultaneously
improving your vocab.
3
Get a rhyming dictionary. This will soon be
your best friend in the world. Look at a rhyming dictionary less as a crutch
and more as creative resource. It's not cheating to look up rhyming words while
you're in the middle of writing some rhymes, because it might jog something
loose you'd never have thought of previously.
A good, cheap dictionary and a
thesaurus are great resources too. Your rhymes will eventually be a lot more
interesting the greater the variety of words becomes.
4
Learn new words actively. SAT or GRE study
guides are great vocabulary sources. Look up words in rap songs you don't
recognize and study the definitions. Hip-hop is often jargon-heavy, using
regional words, locations, and phrases, so it helps to look things up online.
Chief Keef's "Love Sosa" doesn't make much sense if you think it's
about the baseball player.
Try taping up notecards with the
definitions of new words around your house. You can be learning a new word
while you're making breakfast or brushing your teeth if there's a notecard
taped to the wall in the kitchen and bathroom.
Edi
Part 3 of 5: Rhyming Your First Rhymes
1
Start rhyming to a beat. Get a beat without
any words online or loop the instrumental of a song you love on YouTube, and
let it play for a while. Get a feel for the beat. If you've got a rhyming verse
already written, start there, or try writing new rhymes as you listen to the
beat. Repeat it over and over until you've started to get a feel for the
cadence of the song and how your flow fits into it. Don't worry if you lose the
beat at first.
Begin with the downbeat. The vast
majority of rap music is written with a traditional four-four time signature,
also known as Common Time. This means that every measure will have a strong
downbeat at the beginning: ONE-two-three-four-ONE-two-three-four. Start on that
beat.
Often, there will be blank space on
tracks while the rapper is waiting to come in. If you don't have access to
instrumentals or YouTube, you can use those spaces to practice.
2
Improvise. Once you've gotten a feel for
the beat and you've exhausted your rhymes, take tentative steps toward a
freestyle. Repeat a line you've already written but make yourself come up with
a new rhyme for the second half of the rhyme.
Don't worry if what you're saying
doesn't make sense at first. You're trying to get a sense of the feel of the
beat and making your mind create rhymes on the fly. Nobody's listening anyway.
3
Stop thinking. If you think too much about
your next line you are going trip up and stumble over the line you're on.
Practice letting your mind flow freely from one thought to the next. The best
freestylers are relaxed and comfortable with the beats they're working with. If
it doesn't seem to be coming, don't try and force it. Listen to the beat and
try to write some rhymes to it to get started, or try out another beat.
Lock yourself in your bedroom or your
basement or your garage. Nobody else needs to hear your practices if you don't
want them to. Putting in the hours by yourself will ensure that your debut for
listeners will be all the more spectacular.
4
Keep flowing. Even if you make a mistake,
train yourself to keep going. If you stutter over a word or two, spit something
like, "Did I stutter? My flow should be soft like butter." Rap is
like comedy: the timing is everything.
Experienced freestylers often have
back-up lines, which serve as the fire extinguisher in the red box that's
mounted on the wall of rap and used only in emergencies. This is a line, or a
phrase that you use when you can't think of anything else but need to buy some
time to go back out on a tangent. The better you get at freestyling the smaller
this phrase will become. Really good freestylers will use a one syllable filler
line like "Yo" or "Matter of fact". Eventually, your
back-up filler line will be something that you can start saying without
realizing it.
Part 4 of 5: Developing Your Freestyles
1
Turn your starter lines into punch lines.
The best way to increase the speed of your flow and improve your freestyle game
is by reversing the way you work. If you've been practicing by starting with a
line you've written and then moving away from it by improvising, make yourself
start with a new line and work toward that line you've already written and you
know is good.
This is where those rhyming clusters
will help you. If you've got an especially good punch line, practice by rhyming
as many different things as you can with it. Exercising around that line will
make sure that you've got lots of different options the next time you're
improvising.
2
Play with words. In the beginning, it makes
the most sense to freestyle around hard end-rhymes like "bear" and
"chair," but eventually those may start becoming stale and leading
you into clunky rhymes.[2]
Slant rhymes share consonant sounds
without necessarily sharing vowel sound directly. "Vowel" and
"bowl" for example, are slant rhymes.
Assonance and alliteration are
sound-devices in which vowels and consonants, respectively, are repeated in a
line. Edgar Allan Poe in his famous poem "The Raven," uses both at
once: "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" repeats
"s" sounds and "ur" sounds.
3
Develop similes. Like Cassidy's line about
"Goin' platinum like Sisqo hair" or Raekwon's line "I get deep
like a baby seal," a simile that unexpectedly and creatively compares one
thing to another thing is a cornerstone of freestyle hip-hop and poetry alike.
In a notebook, brainstorm different
endings for similes to pull out of your hat. Fill a couple pages with
"like a _______" and experiment by combining them all with the same
line: "My flow is cold / like a rainstorm" or "My flow is cold /
like a sperm whale" leave very different impressions. You may surprise
yourself.
4
Be yourself. Unless you're Rick Ross, it
will be hard to pull off any grand claims about your global cocaine trafficking
empire if you're a teenager from the suburbs. Rhyme about what you know and be
honest. The most important thing (and the thing other freestylers will
recognize) is when your skill is backed up with perspective and honesty.
While it's a good way to develop and
learn, repeating other rappers lines or styles is considered extremely taboo in
the freestyle world, and will need to be dispensed with as soon as you feel
comfortable.
5
Freestyle in front of some friends. Once
you feel relatively comfortable, invite some understanding friends to watch and
critique your skills. This will help you get used to freestyling in front of
people and they'll be able to offer suggestions and encouragement.
Incorporate your audience into the fun
by having someone pick a beat for you to rap over will get you ready for the
possibility of competitions or battles if you're interested in giving one a
shot. You can also have a friend pick a topic, or an item in the room, or a
word and say it out loud. Start freestyling about that topic, item, or word.
This forces you to keep on your toes because your friends are the ones leading
the direction your freestyle goes.
If you have friends who like to
freestyle too, trade verses. When one of you loses the flow, the other picks it
back up. Try to start freestyling as soon as they stop and run with the same
topic or rhyme scheme. If you develop a rhythm together, you might have the
makings of a crew.
Part 5 of 5: Taking the Next Step
1
Compete in a freestyle competition or a rap
battle. Here, you'll have to freestyle over a beat selected by the DJ and
you'll be timed, so you won't be given much time to think before you've got to
start rhyming. You'll also have another MC across from you who may be more
experienced and eager to embarrass you with crude diss lines to get cheers from
the audience. This is one of the conventions of the genre, so you'll need to
develop thick skin and considerable skills before trying this in public.
It's a good idea to attend a lot of
competitions before attempting to compete in any of them. Get a good feel for
your skills and the skills of the other competitors before jumping on stage.
2
Make original music. Try and get in touch
with some up-and-coming producers in your area or online to provide you with
some original beats to work with. If you have a beat, making hip-hop music
requires little more than the most basic audio editing software and a
microphone.
Attending shows, competitions, and
battles is a great opportunity to meet other rappers and beatmakers you might
collaborate with, or who might have resources to share with you.
3
Put your music online. If you eventually
get enough material that you're proud of, start a YouTube channel for your
music and start sharing your music across social media. Put a mixtape together
and release it for free on the Internet. Increasingly, rappers who get signed
to big contracts generate publicity and buzz by releasing free mixtapes.
Burn CD-R copies of your music and give
it out at concerts or gatherings with your contact information included on it.
4
Keep practicing. Keep beats on your phone
or iPod, and freestyle inside your head while doing every day things like
walking down the street, taking the bus or train, or grocery shopping. The more
you practice your rhymes, the better they'll get.
Video
Tips
Start off mastering the smaller, simpler
rhymes. Remember, having a good flow but mediocre rhymes is better than having
a terrible flow and good rhymes! This means that you should start rhyming words
like that have general sounds like "it", "at",
"air", etc.
Another good time to practice is when
you're, say, waiting at the dentist, or walking home from school, or on the
bus, and its even better if you have a phone with you to write down your raps
in case your too embarassed to pull out a notepad in public because it just
looks like you're texting.
Keep practicing every day. Never give up.
If you keep practicing you will be a fantastic rappers•.
Confidence is everything. Be yourself and
rap about things you like at first.
Explore your house, and look at a lot of
things in novel ways. These might inspire you to write lyrics.
If you can't think of anything start with
something you read: "wikihow, wow, who doesn't need that right now, I'm
crap at rap, so I'm just gonna take a chance."
Warnings
Battles are supposed to be fun and the
disses are a convention of the genre. If you're in a battle, respect the other
person's space and avoid confrontations.
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